The Last Winter

Ron Perlman struggling to keep his sanity in an Arctic wasteland. Actually, it's not much of a struggle

The movie is about a drilling crew out in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge determining the feasibility of drilling now that Bush has pushed through his drill-everywhere-you-like-guys oil legislation. You think the green political statements end there? Oh you just wait, pal. They're more persistent than the monsters in this film.

OK, so the head of the project flies back from a meeting with the boss carrying a mandate to get the trucks in and start drilling. Objecting to this is an eco-friendly bearded nut who's been attached to the project as a way to placate Green Party voters. People start going crazy and dying.

Or is something killing them? The film can't decide, and when it does it's too late. You've spent most of the movie believing people are going nuts, for whatever reasons, then the Ghost of Pleistocine Past appears to mop up the rest. In five minutes the actors are decimated and the world is being destroyed by Nature.

Or is it? You'll never know, because the CGI budget ran out before they could complete the final shot. I was waiting for an hourglass to appear and a dialog box saying "Rendering...", but instead the credits rolled.

The film is watchable for all that: the acting is good, the filming is good, and it does a decent job of building up a lot of tension. It's quite heavy-handed with the eco-political dialog, though, and the abrupt ending leaves one wondering what the buildup was intended to anticipate.


* * * R A T I N G * * *

The Last Winter (IMDB)

Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [***__]

Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [*____]
Obscurity : [*____]
Explicability : [***__]

What I would do different: Those CGI monsters have to go.